118800 chief defends mobile phone directory as 'innovative'

The under-fire head of mobile phone directory, 118800, has told BBC’s Working Lunch that recent the controversy would not spell the end for the service.

The online mobile phone directory has been suspended since Friday after reportedly receiving a bulwark of requests from people to remove their numbers from the directory.

The directory has been surrounded in controversy since its launch last month. The company bought up to 16 million out of 42 million UK mobile numbers from market research firms for the directory.

Connectivity‘s CEO Raj Raithatha said that they had no objections to people removing their numbers from the directory but was bullish over the innovative nature of the service, he said, ‘We’ve got to move forward to the 21st Century’.

The site has been closed since last Friday ( 10 July) for 'improvement'. Raithatha said: ‘We didn’t do as much testing as we would have liked, this was an error on our part.’